Evelina and her mother, Hannah Lothrop Gilmore, sat together and sewed this morning. After mending several items – there was always mending to be done – Evelina reworked the waist on a delaine dress, “delaine” meaning “of wool” in French. It was a popular and durable fabric in this era. But altering the waist begs the question, did she have to take it in or let it out? And had she begun to wear her sleeves in the new “pagoda” style?

Augustus Gilmore, Evelina’s nephew and Hannah’s grandson, soon arrived and, once Oakes and his sons came home from the factory at noon, they all dined together. Augustus was close to his Ames cousins, and worked for the company from time to time. After dinner, Augustus accompanied his grandmother to the Torrey house in the village, where Hannah’s granddaughters, Abby and Malvina, lived. Evelina joined them there a bit later, and paid another call as well, on Mrs. Lothrop. There were many Lothrops in Easton, so we can’t know just which one Evelina visited.

We can know that Evelina was somehow involved in the setting up of a private classroom. A young woman named Orinthia Foss, with whom Evelina corresponded, was due to arrive in North Easton to teach. The genesis of this arrangement is a mystery. Was Evelina doing this because of concerns about Susies’ schooling? Who else was involved? And who was Orinthia Foss? How was she hired?

Whatever the back story was on this new little school, Evelina took a bold step today when she committed to renting a schoolhouse. She promptly returned home to write Orinthia with the good news.

“A verry bad day to go out in,” noted Old Oliver in his journal today. Eliza Whitwell refused to leave her home several miles away to join the Ames ladies in the afternoon, even though her husband was there. The carriage – did it belong to Old Oliver, or Oliver Jr, or to the family in general? Whoever owned it, its likely driver was Michael Burns, an employee of Old Oliver who looked after the horses and carriages.

While Michael drove to and from the parsonage in the howling cold, various family members gathered next door at Oliver and Sarah Lothrop Ames’s house for tea. Oakes and his son Oliver (or possibly his brother Oliver – unclear) played cards – probably whist – with Cyrus Lothrop and Helen Ames. Cyrus was an unmarried brother of Sarah Lothrop Ames who lived with Sarah and Oliver, Jr. for many years. Helen was their only daughter; their son, Fred, was probably away at Phillips Exeter Academy on this occasion. Evelina knitted and kept her mother company.

In nearby Taunton, Massachusetts, Evelina reported, the furious wind contributed to a “great fire.” The histories of that period don’t mention this fire, so perhaps it was not as great as Evelina thought. That, or it paled in comparison to the larger fires that Taunton suffered in 1838 and 1859.* Fire, naturally, was the dread of every homeowner and municipality; towns and cities in the 19th century (and before) were pock-marked by periodic burnings, its citizens haunted by the loss of life and property that fires engendered. The fire on this day in Taunton would have been made especially difficult by the frigid air and icy wind.

Sewing the carpet bag was speedy work for Evelina, given her skill with a needle. Carpetbags were fashionable travel bags from as early as the 1820s, in America and England. They gained notoriety after the Civil War when they became symbolic of certain ruthless opportunists – “carpetbaggers” – from the North who flooded into the South to take advantage of the post-war confusion and economic disarray. The negative symbolism of this small piece of luggage was unknowable in 1851, obviously, so we can imagine that Evelina carried her new carpetbag with pride. Perhaps she used it on her next trip to Boston.

Oakes Ames didn’t linger in the office tonight as usual but came home for a quiet evening of reading the Olive Branch. Evelina was pleased to have his company, which must have provided some variety for her elderly mother, too. Sarah Witherell’s company would have added to the ease and sociability of the evening. More often, Sarah stayed in her part of the house in the evening in order to be company to her father. And the boys – Oakes Angier, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton – went back to the shop, although the nine o’clock curfew was nigh.

The Ames house was divided into two living areas, with Old Oliver, Sarah Witherell and her two children on the southern side and Oakes and Evelina’s family on the northern. Old Oliver made this division back in 1827 when Oakes and Evelina first married, indicating then that Oakes, as his eldest son, would inherit the family homestead. The two families had lived side by side ever since, the house expanding and contracting as children grew up, occupants died or moved out, and grandchildren came into the world.

Some Ames family members of today who can remember the old homestead (it was torn down in 1951) shake their heads in wonder at this living arrangement, curious as to how everyone fit in.

It appears that the recent domestic mishap of spilled varnish on the parlor carpet was solved by the installation of new “drugget” or carpeting. The change of carpeting must have been in the works before Evelina’s purchase of drugget in Boston two weeks back. After the rug was installed (by whom?,) Evelina scavenged enough scraps from the cutting to begin to assemble a carpetbag for herself. Waste not, want not.

The mention of cutting the rug to fit around a register helps confirm the existence of a central furnace in the old house. In fact, Old Oliver had installed coal furnaces only recently on his property, in the counting house or office as well as in the residence. Coal as fuel was a marked change from earlier days when the family had relied on wood-burning fireplaces for heat. Oakes Angier must have been pleased with the change. According to his grandson Winthrop, Oakes Angier detested the old fireplaces, remembering that they “broiled you on one side while you froze on the other.” *

Tonight Evelina took her mother and niece Abby Torrey to a prayer meeting at the Bucks’ house where they heard all the Buck family members pray. Evelina’s take on young Charley Buck was prescient, for he would grow up to be the Reverend Dr. Charles Henry Buck, well-respected Methodist minister in a succession of churches in Connecticut, New York and, eventually, Easton.

Another Monday, meaning that Evelina did the housework while Jane McHanna tackled the laundry. Evelina was too busy “choring,” as she often called it, to sit down in the morning and sew or read with her mother, Hannah Gilmore, who was visiting for the week. The women sewed together in the afternoon, however, after the midday meal, and in the evening, they enjoyed a visit from Sarah Witherell. Oakes was most likely over in the office; he and his brother Oliver Jr. often worked there in the evenings after tea.

The boys were around, of course. The shovel factory closed at 6 P. M. whereupon Oakes Angier, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton walked home. There were no dances on a Monday night, so after tea, they amused themselves by reading. All three boys read, yet Oliver (3) was reckoned to be the most scholarly. Even as a child he enjoyed reading and, with Oakes Angier, began to collect books. Years later, a colleague would say of Oliver that “in the company of books he found an absorbing pleasure.”*

On this winter night, everyone indulged in the papers or books, reading by the light of various oil lamps. Evelina was no doubt eagerly turning the pages of David Copperfield, perhaps reading aloud to her mother whose aging eyesight may have precluded the pastime. Hannah Gilmore loved to read. In fact, she had named Evelina after the heroine of a book popular in her youth: Evelina; Or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World. This comic novel by British author Fanny Burney came out in 1778, and continued to find an appreciative audience in both Britain and America. Evelina had probably read it at some point, if only to see how Evelina Anville captivated Lord Orville.

A scheduling mix-up at church today caused consternation. Most congregations had a practice of exchanging ministers. On a regular basis, a minister from one church would swap one Sunday with a minister from another, allowing the congregations to listen to other voices and sermons. On this Sunday, the scheduled switch between Reverend Whitwell of the Unitarian Church and Reverend Lovell of the soon-to-disband Protestant-Methodist assembly failed to take place. Mr. Whitwell wasn’t pleased, but he seemed to recover just fine. He delivered two more “excellent sermons.”

“Mother” was Hannah Lothrop Gilmore, or Mrs. Joshua Gilmore, as she would have been known, or perhaps The Widow Gilmore, her husband having passed away in 1836. One year shy of eighty, she was the mother of eight children, of whom only three were still alive. Evelina was her only living daughter.

Mrs. Gilmore lived most of the time with her middle son, Alson, his wife, Henrietta, and their children at the family farm in the southeastern corner of Easton. Just north of the town line with Raynham, the Gilmore property lay on what was known as the Turnpike Road. In the distant past, Joshua Gilmore had maintained a tavern at that site, and had collected the fees from travelers on that road. In 1851, the family still got income from the Turnpike, but the tavern was gone. The land was all farm.

Occasionally, Mrs. Gilmore would visit with her daughter in North Easton. Alson would carry her to church and after the service was over, Hannah would leave with Oakes and Evelina to stay at their home for the week. While in North Easton, she’d be able to visit not only with her Ames grandchldren, but also with other grandchildren in the area, like Abby and Malvina Torrey. And on this Sunday, her grandson Edwin Williams Gilmore, a grown son of Alson who no longer lived at the farm, paid a visit. He would soon be building a home close to the Ameses.

Evelina could be critical of others, but she was most critical of herself. Her self-deprecation often took a humorous tone, as in having done “a little of everything and not much of anything.” She really tried to get things organized at home today, tackling perhaps one of her biggest challenges: keeping her husband Oakes in decent clothes.

Family lore would have it that Evelina was miserly, lore that is reinforced by Reverend William Chaffin. Chaffin blamed Evelina for Oakes’ shabby “pantaloons,” believing that Evelina “being economical kept them well mended instead of encouraging him to buy new ones.” Yet Chaffin also acknowledged Oakes’s indifference to outfit, telling us that while on a trip into Boston with a friend, Reuben Meader, Oakes responded to Meader’s suggestion that he should wear better clothes by saying: “Oh, I can wear poor clothes if I want to, but some men can’t.”

Oakes spent money on gifts; he was well-known and well-liked for his charitable instincts. However, unlike his brother, Oliver Jr., who shopped for bespoke outfits in Boston, Oakes didn’t spend a dime on his apparel; he simply didn’t care, so Chaffin was unjustified to blame Oakes’s appearance on Evelina. She tried to keep him mended, and we know that she was willing to spend money on clothes; certainly she kept the dressmakers in Easton occupied. But she must have met resistance if and when she tried to improve her husband’s wardrobe.

Today’s hard work had a reward: opening the pages of David Copperfield, the newest book by Charles Dickens.